The halls of Austin have been cleared of the SXSW Interactive crowd, to be replaced with the bands, managers, promoters and fans of the music conference. And that’s brought a sea change to a certain factor: it’s almost impossible to spot more than a handful of iPhones. From the reaction in the halls, Nokia have a chance to win over America this year.
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It begs the question then, if there were fewer iPhones being carried, what phones were there in their place? I've read again this week that Nexus one sales are still very slow, about 1/8 the sales of the 3GS after the same period. iPhone is getting a bit aged, and many are waiting for the new one.
Unregistered wrote:It begs the question then, if there were fewer iPhones being carried, what phones were there in their place? I've read again this week that Nexus one sales are still very slow, about 1/8 the sales of the 3GS after the same period. iPhone is getting a bit aged, and many are waiting for the new one.
You've got to bear in mind that the Nexus One was only really selling to geeks, the SIM only type market in the states isn't anywhere near what it is in europe.
The Droid sold similar to the iPhone over its initial period, and if the Nexus One had come straight out on a carrier/subsidised, it may have sold incredibly well.
I'd be willing to bet that it was Android that was making up the numbers.
I'd guess, if there were fewer iPhones this year, it was probably made up by a larger share of Blackberries and phones running a variant of Android. Those are basically the three dominant (smart phone) platforms in the U.S. Windows Mobile 6.xx is pretty much a non-factor.
There is less variety because, as discussed on this site before, the American wireless market is skewed largely to buying phones on contract and limited to the line of devices each carrier, well, carries. Pricing is structured in a manner where you are effectively penalized for buying an unlocked, unsubsidized phone: you can buy, say, an unlocked Nokia smart phone, bring it to AT&T, the larger GSM carrier, and you would be charged the same voice+text+data rate as someone on a subsidized iPhone plan.
Indeed @Clonmult, it would appear to be Google's retail channel that is the trouble.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/03/16/google_nexus_one_sales_after_74_days/
It appears that there are a million droids out there, which despite being trounced by the 3G S (which sold over 50% more) is turning Motorola around. Considering that Moto were in a worse state than Nokia, just show what can be done.
All this competition is seriously good news, phone tech is really being pushed along now. One day one manufacturer might actually come up with something genuinely useful 😉
Nokia needs to bring more devices out of the lab! The phones they have in the lab sports much better things than the one they have now, but for some reason only the worst trickle out and the best never see the light of the day. 😞
Course, admittedly there are budget constrains, but heck, are we so miserly that we'd be unwilling to fork out more for a better device?!